


Unusual Requirements

by Resonant



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Season/Series 03, Romance, Sexual Dysfunction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-10 03:44:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1154467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Resonant/pseuds/Resonant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"If we are to do this, John, I think it's only fair to tell you that I have. Ahem. Unusual sexual requirements."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unusual Requirements

"If we are to do this, John, I think it's only fair to tell you that I have. Ahem. Unusual sexual requirements."

John blinked, and his smile went a little stiff around the edges. Sherlock could just imagine what he must be picturing. "Yes?"

He'd sworn, after the last disaster, that he'd always explain matters upfront -- if he were even foolish enough to begin another relationship at all -- but it was damnably difficult. He wished, for the nth time, that other people didn't insist on having the dots connected for them. "It's nothing painful or upsetting. In fact, it requires nothing of you at all." John's face had shifted from pained-but-game to I'm-a-doctor-tell-me-anything. Sherlock became aware that he was arranging and rearranging his own fingers, and forcibly stilled his hands. "In point of fact, I don't have orgasms in the presence of other people."

John blinked again, and then a broad, suggestive grin began to spread across his face. "You did yesterday."

"That was --"

"Quite spectacularly, in fact."

"Yes, well, that was an unusual occurrence." He felt the memory of it in his blood. It was the reason he was going to all this trouble in the first place. "I was as surprised as anyone."

John, poor fellow, was trying to work it out. "So it isn't that you don't _like_ to ..."

In fact it had been a stunning intimacy. Breathtaking. Unprecedented. Almost frightening. Luckily John had been too distracted by his own equally premature climax to register how shocked Sherlock had been, how laid bare. Didn't _like_ to? Other people could have that every _night_ if they liked, but for Sherlock -- well, no sense expecting lightning to strike twice.

"It isn't that I don't like to," he agreed. "Ordinarily I can't."

"Can't like --" John mimed losing turgidity in the most vulgar way imaginable. "Or --"

"Isn't it enough to say that I've found it preferable to go away after, and achieve climax by myself in private?"

"Yeah," John said with a placating gesture. "Yeah, Sherlock. We can do it any way you want."

What he wanted was kissing, any kind, for hours and hours, slipping down from the sofa to the floor for greater contact; stripping away the costume that disguised John Watson as an ordinary man, and letting him strip Sherlock bare (hesitantly, after Sherlock's confession, waiting for signals that it was acceptable until Sherlock lost patience and removed his clothes himself). He wanted John waking his hungry skin with fingers and tongue ("Yes, it's fine, it's, ah, _very_ good, so long as your expectations aren't, oh, _John_ "), and he wanted to touch John all over and taste his skin, pinch, bite, squeeze, swallow, and lock his eyes on John's beautiful weathered face in that moment when he lost all self-consciousness to pleasure.

And then he wanted to kiss John's slack mouth and withdraw to his own room and remember everything without haste for as long as it took and come like a nuclear bomb into his own patient, familiar fist.

\-----

The next bit was predictable; people were idiots, and all idiots reacted the same way to the same stimuli. So it began with John in Sherlock's doorway asking for more information ( _Because I am abnormally slow about it; John, surely you know me well enough to be aware that I don't consider 'abnormal' to be an insult of any sort; I am aware of when others are not happy with me, I simply don't care most of the time; whatever you're about to propose, you may rest assured that it has been tried and found wanting_ ) and evolved into a blazing row, and ended in the usual, expected, wearisome --

Wait. Hold on. That wasn't how it was meant to --

John pulled off with a mischievous expression and said, "Shut up and enjoy it, Sherlock. When I get bored of it, I'll stop."

And he did, and said, "Oh, christ, that's all I can," and made extremely selfish use of Sherlock's hand and Sherlock's bare hip, which Sherlock didn't mind a bit, and then kissed him on the forehead and said, "Idiot," and padded out of Sherlock's room with his trousers in his hand, leaving Sherlock in the novel position of not being certain which he wanted more: to come, or to think.

\-----

"This ... unusualness of yours. Is it something you're interested in changing?"

"I thought you were going to bed. Anyhow, it won't work."

"You don't even know what I --"

"It won't _work._ Don't you think I've tried it? It doesn't matter how much I 'close my eyes' and 'focus my mind,' it ends with a frustrated bedmate and a sore prick. Better to stick with what works."

"I only meant: suppose you did it and I stood out here and listened?"

"Why would you want to do that? Because you fancy yourself a sex therapist?"

"Because it turns me on, you twat."

"... does it? I don't ... make noise or anything. Talk, or ... scream ..."

"But I could hear you _breathing._ "

"Y-yes. I think -- Yes. ... John?"

"Yeah?"

"Just checking. ... John?"

"Still here, Sherlock."

"This is strange."

"Too weird, huh? I'll go."

"No! Don't. I ... like it."

"Yeah? Want to tell me what you're up to?"

"No."

"Right, sorry, I --"

"But you could ... keep talking."

"Yeah? You like it, knowing I'm out here, listening?"

"You can't hear anything."

"Your voice has gone all velvety. I can hear that."

"Velvety. What ... rot."

"And you're breathing fast. And anyway, I can picture it. Are you on your back?"

"Side. Facing -- facing the door."

"Facing me. Mm. If I opened the door --"

"John!"

"Sorry, sorry, I won't do that, I wouldn't -- Sherlock? Did you --"

"Yes."

"Oh, god. I talked right through it like an idiot. Sorry."

"It was ... good. ... John?"

"Yeah?"

"You could ... come in. If you wanted. ... Sorry. You needn't --"

"That would be OK? Really?"

"... Yes."

\-----

And so he found, unexpectedly, that it worked very well. If one of them snored, or kicked, John could retreat to his own bed, and naturally Sherlock often only lay with him until he went to sleep and then got up to tend to a test tube. But just the same, it was glorious to fall asleep relaxed from orgasm _and_ touching John's warm skin.

And in the morning he could wake up already hard and wanting, already kissing, and get John off in just a moment or two, and be so ready for his own climax, aching for it --

"John!" he said. "Go, leave, I want --"

John, the utter bastard, yawned hugely and stretched, putting his sleep-flushed and slightly bitten torso on display. Sherlock was _vibrating_ with the need to come, and John was still here. "Why are you still here?"

"God. Just want to sleep. No, seriously, Sherlock," because Sherlock had begun to push him off the bed. He grabbed the pillow and blanket and held on. "Look, I'm just going to go down here on the floor, all right?" And he slid off the bed in a pile of fabric. "I'll turn my back," he said, muffled in the pillow.

"Fine," Sherlock said between his teeth. Before he was done, he thought he heard a snore.

\-----

"Think you've re-wired me," John said, thumbing Sherlock's lower lip dry. "Normally I'd be done about now, but now I just wonder what's next. Why don't I stay and watch?"

Sherlock could recall debacles that resulted from acquiescing to such a request, and also debacles that resulted from refusing it. "I'm not entertainment," he said, as he'd said to other men, though somehow because it was John there was less venom in it. "Trust me; I've got lots of experience in this. It will take too long, and you will get bored."

"Then I'll go back to sleep," John said. "Or I'll get up and shower, get on with my day." He turned on his side, suddenly losing some of his languor. "Rather like that idea, actually. Leave you here wanking, come out of the shower and find you here wanking -- christ, that's really -- you've done something strange to my brain, Sherlock." And he kissed him hard and padded out, whistling, as if it were any other morning, as if he hadn't just left Sherlock, for the first time in his entire existence, faced with the struggle not to come too _quickly._

Sherlock heard the toilet flush and the shower start up, a subtle change in the sound as water went from hitting porcelain to hitting skin -- John's skin, going pink in the steam.

He could --

For a moment every cell in his body was united in the intention of getting up and joining John in the shower. Lovers did that; it wasn't weird or excessive. He _could._

But it put him right back where he'd started from when John was in the room: The instant he wasn't alone, he'd go back to being so damned abnormally slow. People always thought they could tolerate that, but after a time it apparently began to wear on a person.

Better to stay here, exactly where John was imagining him, like some sort of pornographic room decor. Where John would come back into his room and choose his clothes and comb his hair and thread a belt into his trousers. Would he cast admiring looks at Sherlock in his bed? Or would he go about his business as if Sherlock with his cock in his hand were no more interesting than his pillow and his blankets?

There was no reason on earth to find it erotic to be ignored, but if John barely spared him a glance -- if John finished getting dressed and cast one last look over the room to see if anything were out of place while Sherlock squirmed and panted and sweated on his sheets, and only then did he meet Sherlock's eye and look down his bare body and smile --

"Oh," John said, coming through the door with his hair still dripping. "I barely missed it."

\-----

"Slower," John said.

"What? I don't want to."

"I know you don't. But after all, you're still having sex with me.'

Sherlock froze. _Was_ he? He'd been thinking that he was having sex with John until John came, and after that he was wanking just as he always did. But now he saw that this was far from obvious. John was in the room with him, and receiving some form of gratification from Sherlock's arousal and eventual orgasm, that much was inexplicable but obvious. John viewed them as lovers -- they _were_ lovers; any other interpretation was laughable. Which made this act clearly a sexual one.

Of all the damnable things!

If this was sex, then John had the right to a preference as to how long it lasted. He would quickly become impatient with Sherlock's pursuit of orgasm. Sherlock _knew_ this. He'd seen it happen before.

His climax, which had seemed imminent, even inevitable, now withdrew, making way for the vivid memory of the bleak and pleasureless minutes he'd spent chasing orgasm in the past, as his grip grew ever more uncomfortably tight and his partner's impatience grew more and more apparent, until coming was a chore from which all joy had fled.

"And therefore --" John was oblivious to all this. John was laying out his words the way he did when he thought he was being amusing. Just as though their fragile sexual functionality hadn't been broken forever.

"Therefore," he went on, "you listen to me. You listen to me when I say, 'Kiss me,' " (and of course he did, because it was precisely in accord with his own wishes; John kissed like an artist, except that if you were very careful and wound him up just enough, he kissed like a starving man, and that was what Sherlock loved best), "and you listen to me when I say, 'Let me suck you,' " (and Sherlock did; of course he did; he'd never realized how incredibly pleasurable the act was when one wasn't trying and failing to achieve orgasm from it) "and I like it, Sherlock. Makes a nice change. And so now I'm going to tell you what to do, and you're going to listen to me, and you're not going to come until I say so."

"By the time you say so, it will be beyond all hope. I might as well get up and go back to the clotting factor experiment."

"Is that so?" John traced Sherlock's knuckles where he was gripping the sheet, and didn't wait for an answer. "One finger. Anywhere you like, but only one."

Christ. Sherlock loosened his hand from the bedsheet.

One finger, making small circles on the most sensitive spot on his cock. It wasn't going to get him to climax, but it was as though John had done something to his body, turned his finger itself into an erogenous zone. His breathing was audible in the quiet room.

"Not so hard," John said after a while. "You'll lose sensitivity."

Sherlock resentfully lightened the pressure. "I know how to do it."

"You know how _you_ do it. Slower."

"The way I do it is the way that works," Sherlock said through his teeth, because, inexplicably, the more frustrated he was, the more intense his arousal became.

"You can do it your way later," John said darkly. "After I'm done with you."

Sherlock heard an inarticulate hiss coming from his mouth. John heard it, too, and smirked. How long, then, before John was done with him? "So happy to provide entertainment," he said in a poor imitation of his normal voice.

"You've no idea," John said. "New plan. Both hands, one finger apiece."

"Shall I hum a little tune?" It actually took concentration. It was challenging. It was _interesting._ He was limited by the flexibility of his wrists, and everything he tried was impossible to sustain, and the pleasure built but couldn't crest -- maddening -- irresistible. Alternating fingers was the only thing he could do and keep doing for any length of time, and it seemed his cock got more and more sensitive, and it wasn't enough, wasn't enough, he needed more -- "John," he said, and the note of plea in his voice was shocking.

"Soon," John said in a note of dark and confident promise. "I just want you to tell me one thing. One thing, Sherlock, before I let you do as you like."

Sherlock couldn't even ask, could only tip his head to look through slitted eyes at John's face.

"Do you want me to touch you?"

"Yes," Sherlock gasped, and the next moment John's hand was on his cock and John's mouth was on his mouth and he came like a firecracker.

A long time later, he became aware that one of his hands was tangling with John's, turning over and over in a slick way that was not remotely as disgusting as it ought to be, and the other hand was holding John's head still for small sipping kisses, one after another. He released his grip and let his head fall back, exhausted, and John's smile wasn't mocking or triumphant but frankly a bit silly.

He let his eyes fall shut and tried not to imagine what his answering smile must look like.

"Here," John said, "don't go back to sleep. You just woke up."

"Hush," he said. "Getting tonight's sleep done early. More time for clotting later. Be quiet."

\-----

It was puzzling where to go from there. They'd had a rhythm worked out, and it had been functional and pleasurable, but now they'd broken it.

Was John going to expect this to continue? Did he think that he had _solved_ Sherlock?

There was a case of minor interest involving the theft of free-range chickens -- Sherlock _did_ still solve cases from time to time; it wasn't as though he were the sort of idiot whose brain wasn't fit for contemplating anything but carnal matters. Though it was true that it had been difficult, before, not to lose hours to feverish fantasy. And today it was difficult not to brood, and ponder, and imagine ever worse outcomes.

John would come home from clinic and bear him off to the couch or the bed as if he were a normal man, and the insult was bad enough, but what would happen when, instead of a repeat of last night's fluke success, John instead got a taste of Sherlock's usual reactions? He would be impatient -- or, worse, _patient_ , in that doctorly way of his. Sherlock would have to see pity or boredom or clinical interest on his face. That would be intolerable.

So John came home from clinic and said, "Had a bit of a --" and Sherlock, without changing his position on his back on the sofa, said, "Yes, a plastic knife fight, I'm sure it was terribly droll."

John blinked at Sherlock's tone, and some of the animation went out of his manner, and paradoxically it only made Sherlock want to hurt him again. "You're standing in my light," he said, and, "Not there; can't you see the spatters?" and " _Don't_ tell me about Maryam's engagement ring; I can't bear it; I'll expire of boredom."

When he opened his eyes to gauge the effect, he was surprised to find John grinning. "Something amuses you?"

"If that's the way it is, I'll go on upstairs," John said. "You'll feel better when you've had a nice wank."

Sherlock turned his head toward John, quite against his will. "What are _you_ going to do?"

"Thought I'd have one as well."

For some time after he went upstairs, Sherlock lay on the sofa in his dressing gown simply being outraged, and insulted, and perplexed. And then, somewhat against his will, he found he was beginning to listen.

John usually took care of his masturbation needs in the shower, out of some misguided concern for privacy. But Sherlock didn't hear the shower start. Nor did he hear John's bedroom door lock.

Or even shut.

Was this one of those games he so despised, where John said, "Stay down here," but really meant, "I expect you to come up and join me, and I am going to be disappointed in you if you don't"? It was apparently the sort of thing lovers did, but it was not the sort of thing John Watson did; aside from certain fixed ideas about what did not belong in places where food was, John was refreshingly free from unstated rules.

Which meant he was most likely -- almost certainly -- telling the truth; he was most likely -- almost certainly -- upstairs quietly wanking.

Without Sherlock.

Lying in the tangled nest they had made of his bed --

Perhaps John was the sort who liked it standing up?

Sitting against the headboard? On his side like an artist's model? Straddling a pillow, kneeling on the floor, flat on his back with his feet braced against the wall?

He had seen John come some two dozen times now, so it was odd that he would find it so arousing to _imagine_ it. Was John slow and luxuriant when he was alone, or hasty and businesslike? Did his neck and chest flush, as they did when he was with Sherlock? When he came, did he make that choked-off gasp that was so delightful? Sherlock loved to watch John, especially when he was greedy and demanding.

And then came a thought that froze Sherlock. Was this the way John thought about him?

It _was._ He instantly recognized the ring of truth. When the two of them parted, John wasn't done thinking about him. John, wherever he was, was picturing Sherlock. His mouth, his hands, his cock.

He'd probably be disappointed if he could see the mechanical way Sherlock went at it; he'd probably --

Well, Sherlock knew what he'd say, didn't he? He'd say, "Slower." He'd say, "One finger, anywhere you like."

Sherlock wasn't aware of forming an intention to get up; he simply noticed the stair as he was climbing it. John's door was open, and his room was dark, and he was on his back on the bed in vest and pants (between which his cock stood out with mouthwatering obsceneness), and he smiled cheekily and said, "Hoped you might join me."

"Put your hands on your head," Sherlock said, and was shocked at the hoarseness of his voice.

John's smile went even cheekier. "Make me," he said, and slowly rolled his hips up, pushing his cock through his fist.

It was beyond bearing. "Put them on my head, then," Sherlock said, and knelt down sideways on the bed, and bent to suck him.

He did love this, whether or not that made sense -- not just for the power but for the pure sensual overload of it. John was ordinarily noisy but wordless at this stage, but tonight he tugged gently on his handful of Sherlock's hair and said, "Thinking about me, were you?"

Sherlock didn't suppress a huff of irritation -- _obvious, John_ \-- and John laughed, breathy. "Funny, 'cos I was thinking about you. Always thinking about you, now, imagining how you might do it --"

"You've seen me," Sherlock objected.

John tugged in the other direction: "Don't _stop._ "

Sherlock didn't stop. Little by little he found himself reclining, wrong way on the bed, relaxing into sucking John off as slowly as he could manage it. John turned on his side, making everything easier to reach, and Sherlock took him deeper as a reward, and then his breath caught as he felt John's mouth on his own cock.

He twitched, half annoyed; it was distracting, but not enough so to make him leave off what he was doing in order to say so. John had a particular, slow, full-body writhe that he only did when his cock was in Sherlock's mouth, and Sherlock wanted to enjoy it.

There it was, a circling of the hips, a shifting of the shoulders -- with mounting excitement Sherlock waited, breathlessly, for the next step, because if John decided he didn't want to stop, if he decided he was ready to come, then he'd start to tremble lightly through his midsection. There it was! Sherlock theorized that it was partly simple arousal and partly the effort required not to manhandle Sherlock or choke him. It was good, it was _delicious,_ it had never been this good, he never wanted it to stop --

Christ, John was still sucking him, and he was coming.

There was a bit of a struggle, rather blurry, as Sherlock focused as much attention as he could on keeping his jaw loose and not biting John or hurting him in any way; his mouth wanted to suck, _hard,_ in time with the spasms in his cock, and when he did, John let out a muffled wail and his hips pistoned up hard, and Sherlock flailed out with one hand -- _still_ coming, dear god -- and found John's hip on the second or third try, and at last managed to work his oversensitive cock out of John's reach without missing any of John's own climax.

"You tricked me," he said to John, some time later.

"Didn't," John said. "If the only consulting detective in the world can't keep track of his own cock, that's not my fault."

"I have never gone to bed with anyone as devious as you are," Sherlock said.

"You've apparently never gone to bed with anyone who wasn't an idiot."

"There's very little alternative, is there," Sherlock said. And then he sat up suddenly as a suspicion occurred to him.

John's hair stood up in back. His eyes were heavy and his mouth wore the very same curling, self-satisfied smile that had, some months ago, made it impossible for Sherlock not to kiss him. He had tugged his pants back up, and he looked like any man. An attractive man; a pleasant man; at the moment a happy man; but not at all an extraordinary man.

Just a good-natured fellow who had somehow, blindly, obliviously stumbled on a way to bring Sherlock's recalcitrant libido into line.

Half a dozen ways, in fact.

Without a single misstep.

"What?"

Sherlock lay down beside him -- right way round this time -- and looked at his face from closer up, but nothing unusual revealed itself. "You've got a day off tomorrow, haven't you?"

"Yeah." He backed up enough to leave part of the pillow for Sherlock. "Why?"

Sherlock shuffled closer. "I've just thought of some things I'd like to try, that's all."

**Author's Note:**

> This was written before Series 3, so it definitely has Series 2 characterization, to the extent that it has any.
> 
> [edited to add] I just realized I forgot to include one of my favorite lines, which was John lying all sleepy and satisfied and saying, "Bye, Sherlock. Hope you handle everything OK."


End file.
